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Enhanced N-doping in mesoporous carbon for efficient electrocatalytic CO2 conversion

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Abstract

The capability of electrocatalytic reduction of carbon dioxide (CO2) using nitrogen (N)-doped carbon strongly depends on the N-doping level and their types. In this work, we developed a strategy to generate mesoporous N-doped carbon frameworks with tunable configurations and contents of N dopants, by using a secondary doping process via the treatment of N,N-dimethylformamide (DMF) solvent. The obtained mesoporous N-doped carbon (denoted as MNC-D) served as an efficient electrocatalyst for electroreduction of CO2 to CO. A high Faradaic efficiency of ∼ 92% and a partial current density for CO of −6.8 mA·cm−2 were achieved at a potential of −0.58 V vs. RHE. Electrochemical analyses further revealed that the active sites within the N-doped carbon catalysts were the pyridinic N and defects generated by the DMF treatment, which enhanced the activation and adsorption CO2 molecules. Our study suggests a new approach to develop efficient carbon-based catalysts for potential scalable CO2RR to fuels and chemicals.

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Acknowledgements

We thank the following funding agencies for supporting this work: the National Key Research and Development Program of China (Nos. 2017YFA0206901 and 2018YFA0209401), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 21773036), the Science and Technology Commission of Shanghai Municipality (Nos. 17JC1402000 and 19XD1420400), and the Innovation Program of Shanghai Municipal Education Commission (No. 2019-01-07-00-07-E00045).

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  1. Min Kuang and Anxiang Guan contributed equally to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Laboratory of Advanced Materials, Department of Chemistry and Shanghai Key Laboratory of Molecular Catalysis and Innovative Materials, Fudan University, Shanghai, 200438, China

    Min Kuang, Anxiang Guan, Zhengxiang Gu, Peng Han, Linping Qian & Gengfeng Zheng

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  1. Min Kuang
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  2. Anxiang Guan
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Correspondence to Gengfeng Zheng.

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Kuang, M., Guan, A., Gu, Z. et al. Enhanced N-doping in mesoporous carbon for efficient electrocatalytic CO2 conversion. Nano Res. 12, 2324–2329 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12274-019-2396-6

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